Into Ruin
by Sivven
Summary: Contemplations on grief and deliverance.


Into Ruin

"**This winter is cold as the Dark Lord's lost soul..." Dame Trill murmured, ****tumbling the dice in their cup, before the toss. "And may it be damned as such..."**

The old woman, who sat across the worn and empty table, looked up. Vacant, faded blue eyes flickered with an ancient recollection. _Lost...? _She sighed, touching her withered cheek, smoothing the white hair beneath her cowl, and memory subsided.

"What say _you_, Sister...?" old Trill whispered, "of tales from the _ice_..."

Jaina stood; brittle bones groaned, and she leaned upon her staff, struggling away from the barren table, away from the others, with their watching, whispery eyes. They still looked at her sidelong and wary—even now. How long had it been? _Fifty years...? _She had nothing to say, and a nimble, curling wind, a dainty vestige of magic, endeavored to assuage her.

_ You did your best_...it murmured..._you did what you could...to save him..._

A face leaned close to hers; spectral lips brushed her cheek. He was only a phantom, a shade of loss; but he was _her _ghost, _her_ haunting. The pale-gold hair, the luminous eyes...it was the young, beautiful face of her long-dead beloved. How he had glowed in the sunlight! How _radiant_ he had been...! Now but a wisp of memory, he was the melancholy hostage of her pain. Cold recall teased and tormented her, and the little coil of magic lost its aura and fell. As all had fallen. Into ruin.

Jaina groaned, aching with despair. Evil time had taken everything from her. Why would it not deliver her from memories of _him_...? Was there a harsher judgment than remorse? A famine fiercer than silent loneliness...?

She glanced around the cloistral room, its blank windows and bare, stone floors, the chill-dead fire pit. There was no warmth for them—the pariahs—dangerous, fragile relics of a dim and dark past.

And hers, the darkest of them all.

Here, in halls that once rang with rapture and power, now there was only the stillness of endings. Of those who had done the great works, most were dead, their names dismissed and forgotten. Or cursed. _As a certain, once-beautiful, elven prince.._.Jaina gasped, pressing a trembling finger to her brow.

_Oh, she could not remember his name! Had he deserved this brutal anonymity? _

Of the rest—the still living—most were lost or hidden in obscurity, waiting patiently for conclusion, expecting no more, and no peace. Rarely, a dream—a tremor—of what once was, passed through, in soft lament. A dying sleeper, struggling in pain, weeping of loss. Of the fall. Of ruin.

And when she spoke of it—when she spoke of _him_—though now she seldom did, the eyes of the young widened in disbelief, at her hushed words.

_Come away.._.they would whisper among themselves. _Poor thing...she walked too close to the darkness...was burned by the hunger and the ice... No one returns from that place. Not whole..._

_Poor old thing is quite mad..._

_ I was young, once...! _She wanted to cry, but she only barely believed it herself. Young—brightly burning flame—and loved. Oh, yes...so dearly loved.

She lowered her head. Long tendrils of her snowy hair escaped her hood and she stared at them in horror, beginning to tremble—mind recoiling, shuddering away from that last, terrible memory..._of_ _him..._

He had seemed an apparition—one shaped of sleet and perpetual snow. Glacial eyes, weeping blue rune-fire—silvery, moon-white hair, twisting in the bitter, midnight wind that enfolded him. Even it, in caressing him, was frozen by his touch. He listened, attentive, to the seductions of primeval ice, the howling power of this fearsome place; he was the rage in the voice of eternal winter.

How she had gazed upon the chiseled, ice profile—majestic and serene—seeking _him_ in a place he no longer lived; he no longer lived at all. So fair, he was, in life...how had he acquired—in death—such a cold, fell beauty? Not of the light, he had once loved—but of the ice, he had become. He had given up all his gold, for the silver night—all warmth, for the sacred ice.

Nothing of _him_ remained, only ferocious darkness, and the dead heart, unbending—heeding only the cursed voracity of the blade. The golden soul that had once been his, cried out to him for deliverance, from the ice, from the darkness, and the pain. An anguished voice..._release_ _me_...and the blade sang, jubilant and cruel, mirrored in his eyes.

_Oh, how she had hated it...! _That _living_ blade. Living, when it had murdered _him_, to feed itself. How she had longed to see it shattered into pieces! Yet, in the end, when the Light's judgment did strike him down, he was left bereft, as broken as the blade. Falling—besieged, yet unrepentant—he died upon the icy stones, amid scattered remnants of the massive darkness he had wrought. That _precious_ life, so long lost—and still, her heart had shrieked in horror, to see him brought so low. Surrounded by those who hated him—for no living thing could ever love _this_ king. But _she_ had...even then, as he reached out, not for salvation, not for _her_—not even for the peace of forgiveness—but for the very thing that had doomed him.

_Wait for me..._her heart cried..._my beloved one..._

A ghostly whisper came in haunting echo..._my_ _beloved_. Ethereal arms sought to embrace her, and yet, could not. _How she yearned to hold him! _But there was nothing she could touch, to make him hers again.

Only the roaring silence held her now—that coveted oblivion, without desire, sanctuary from the whisperings of the brutal apostate—hope—that most savage architect of tears.

And the old woman wept. She had never stopped weeping, since that day—_that_ _terrible_ _day_—she denied the promise she had made, so breathless in his arms. The tender words of fidelity, a pretty mask for faithlessness to flaunt.

Jaina wailed softly, stricken eyes seeking any respite from regret, feeble hands fluttering in a helpless agony of silent grief, pressing her brow, as if to rub away sorrow into forgetfulness.

Might it not have been some _other_ power—some colder voice than hers, whispering..._betray...?_ _Oh, there was a liar's prayer for peace!_ Empty, punishing words, without solace...the biting blame was _hers_ to bear. She had failed him and he had died—_her_ design, not another's..._she_ had been the agent of his end..._she_ had broken him..._even_ _before_ _the_ _blade_...abandoning him to the tempting, evil thing that waited, hungering for him...the cruelest of fates.

She remembered the sound of his heart, breaking, when he called her name..._Jaina_...as she turned away from him..._Jaina...?_

So burdened with pain and rage, so wounded by his own necessity, he fell, brutalized by the pitiless, reshaping hand that had chosen him-for ruin. Cast out by Grace, he was shunned by the Light...violated and unforgivable. Only the desolate North had answered his despairing cry, and when he gave himself to the ferocity of its embrace, it had swallowed him whole.

Lost to the wild spaces, _he_ never returned, but a fiend walked back out of the wasteland, wearing his transfigured flesh. For Death's sake. Or perhaps, for steel. Steel and bitter ice.

And he had come to fill the living world with darkness.

Tormented by restless memory, the old woman crept away, leaving the others behind, for the cold, windy alcove beyond the hall, for its crumbling parapet that faced the blighted North. The hated North that so troubled her. She walked out into the wind and smelled snow upon its mocking breath; she shivered from its intimacy. The chill slipped inside her hood, its icy fingers working to freeze her tears. She moaned and it mimicked her—taunting—this wind from the North. It knew her name—and thus empowered, it oppressed her.

_Jaina..._

_ He whispered it to me..._said the unrelenting wind..._in the darkness, alone on the ice...Jaina...as __he tore out his own heart, to still its pain..._

Andwhat of _her_ heart? Her _pain_..._her_ chained soul, taken, as surely as his had been. Would it languish forever? Or had it succumbed—unnoticed—in the tedium of the years between then, and this terrible now? Did it still wait...? For quietus without torment, the peaceful repose that had not—would not—come to pass, not for her.

_Forsaken_...she knew all too well, the meaning of the word.

It was _his_ soft whisper that defied the gloating wind..._Yours..._he sighed..._Still yours..._

Had there only been the one, redeeming moment, a glimmer—a last glimpse of that sweet, snared soul—perhaps then, she could have found some measure of peace..._from_ _him. _ She sighed. The secret thing that had made him who and what he was..._hers_. The brightness that had so easily stolen her away. Until she was helplessly lost, in his pale, laughing eyes, in that gentle, brave, foolish heart.

Jaina shook her head. She no longer asked why. A small word, to be such a glutton—feeding off her pain, her hopelessness—and it had fed well. But no longer. Only youth asks the fool's question..._why?_

Age knew well, Fate's cold answer.

_Because I can..._

Murderer of frail faith, blasting it to ash. Moments, caught fast in the down-spiraling wind of time's empty interludes—dispersed and meaningless.

A bloody, lost crown. A silver king of ice—condemned—in the shadow of a great, frost sword. And the death of love.

All falling, falling, into ruin.

Had he forgotten her...as surely as he had forgotten flesh? Had the long years torn them forever apart? Or would that bright thing—_remembering_—find her, despite the darkness...and finally free her, too...at the end of things?

_Soon, _he murmured, as a lover might, _soon_ _enough, my Jaina..._

The old woman left the icy alcove behind, returning to the scant protection of the cold, mean rooms within—featureless, but for the watching host of unkind eyes.

_Remember the wicker man...how brightly he burned..._his voice tempted in her ear. _How brightly..._you_...burned... _

Yes, she remembered.

It still lived in her heart, even now...

His kiss, soft voice, whispering—gentle, warrior's hands, hard and callused—yet, so tender...oh, his touch! Sweet, caressing mouth on hers...how he had made her _burn_...

"If we could but get a wee bit of wood..." Trill moaned, resentful eyes upon the cold hearth.

"And who among _us_ needs wood...?" Jaina said, reaching up, scooping power out of memory, and she opened her hand, as she opened her heart—_her burning heart_—sending intention, a bolt, into the empty belly of the cold fire pit. It was not a tentative curl of force that burst into being there, but rather, the wild, dark heart of enchantment. And it bounded up the chimney, and into the masked, gray sky, heavy with snow, now freshly falling. Ice shivered away, into tears, riding the inferno wind that roared beneath the rising wings of the seething, elemental light that reached to pierce the sky, a promise—a warning—to the North.

_Yes_...he sighed; and there was a smile in his pale, viridian eyes..._Nothing ever really dies..._

The mage crossed to the fire, where it had spilled out, where stone ignited, savaged beneath the purity of the magical flame, and the manifest weight of ancient powers, restored.

_"Attend me..." _Jaina said gently, and tapped her staff, once, upon the burning stones. The fire retreated into the brazier, whispering a subtle, willowy tale of magic, as it leapt into the air to cast chill _out_. It smiled for her; it danced for her. It ravened the cold.

_For_ _her_.

As the wicker man had danced—for memory, for completion. As _they _had danced, together, in the flickering darkness, equally consumed—in the glow of an all-encompassing fire. It was an ecstatic fire, one that never wavered, and it would burn them—past ruin—into immortality.

This is my first fan fiction. Please review—all input is welcome.

Warcraft characters are the property of Blizzard Entertainment.


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